Do yourself a favor and get ahold of one of Hardy Wallace’s wines (dirty & rowdy or extradimensional wine co yeah!). Hardy is the biggest evangelist for the grape in CA and you can listen to him talk about Mourvedre vineyard expression on his episode of the I’ll drink to that
For reference, a few reviews to whet your appetite:
2022 Marvelous Mourvèdre. From CT review:
1 hr decant. Oh, where to begin? Well, first of all, if you’re me, forget all you assume you know about Mourvèdre. This does have some aspects of southern Rhone Mourvèdre— brambly fruit, tons of dried herbes de Provence, some gravel. But it has little of the heavier notes of old world Mourvèdre. There is very little plum or meaty notes. There is initially a candied fruit aspect to this that convinced me there was some Grenache in this - but no.
What s…
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2019 Mo Yeah! Mourvèdre blend: below is not the CT review, which you can look up if you care. Spoiler: I liked it.
In the old days - in living memory - Christmas cake was not a sort of dry brick with radioactively colorful fruit bits studding the dark flesh of cake under 3 inches of white hard sauce to make it sickly and sweetly “palatable”. Nor was it an architectural monstrosity shown on the Food Network to confuse people into thinking this was what food is supposed to look like…
2021 Evangelho Old Vine Mourvèdre:
Off the fricken charts. My favorite Mourvèdre of all time. If the grape has a reputation for rusticity and tannin, this wine is light years from that: elegant, seductive, and electric.
From CT review:
1 hr decant and served in Zalto bordeaux glasses.
This is definitely the tastiest and probably the greatest Mourvèdre I have had in my life. Much lighter colored, lighter bodied and less tannic than a typical old world Mourvèdre. Tons of bing cherry, thyme, a …
2016 Dirty and Rowdy Mourvèdre Shake Ridge Ranch - USA, California, Sierra Foothills, Amador County (3/21/2020)
Opened for the Dirty & Rowdy virtual tasting of Shake Ridge Ranch Mourvèdre, as I did not yet receive my 2018. So glad I opened this, as it was absolutely smoking! Open for business without a decant, it immediately conjured up warm, dusty earth, as if I was walking the vineyard in August. Then the sunshiney red fruit, with all its California sweetness came in, along with brushy herb…
Also check out excellent wines from Desire lines, Sandlands (Mataro), Halcon, and ridge (mataro)!
From Bandol, you can’t go wrong with Tempier, Pradeaux and Pibarnon
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